Friday, September 4, 2015

Out-of-control Pope.

If
President Obama were to propose an expansion of coal production and of fossil fuels, be assured Republicans would be screaming bloody murder, going
to court, and finding ways to kill the plan.
Clearly any such thing, they would argue, will be bad for people and for
the economy — the death of job growth. Remember
their paramount rule: before evaluating if something is good, one must first
consider the source. Obama = a no
vote. Well, we know one person who was
applauding when the president announced new restrictive EPA standards some
weeks back, the Pope. Francis will be here
in the days ahead. He speaks in New York
and then at a joint session of Congress on September 24. He is likely to say some things there that won’t
get him standing ovations from its majority members. In fact, he’s likely to give many on the
right, including some presidential candidates who conflate their religion with
party affiliation, some very uncomfortable moments.

First he
didn’t want those red shoes or to rest his head in palatial environs.He told bishops to stop building their own
palaces.Then he opted for a modest car
and started making telephone calls to ordinary folk.Just yesterday he traveled in that Ford Focus
to his Rome
optician trying out new eyeglass lenses which he then purchased — cost kept
him from replacing the frames. Early on he did some reorg of the Vatican and its bank.Out of control for sure.They
should have known the moment he took the name Francis — one associated with
modesty that no pope had ever used — and could be seen enthusiastically washing
the feet of the meek, sick and disadvantaged.Two plus years in, the man who speaks in a quiet oratorical voice, is
delivering what the NY Times described as “fiery speeches”.Out of control and making a lot of high
placed people in and out of his church very uneasy.Some of them, of course, are counting on
outliving him, of quickly putting things “right” the moment he’s been put to
rest.A transitional pope, but that’s
what they said about John XXIII and you know how that went.

If it
weren’t so pathetic the pushback of the religious right against Pope Francis
would be laughable.What’s so obviously
absurd is that the same people who cheered the clearly partisan statements of
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson or the fight waged by American Catholic bishops
against the ACA are now complaining that the pope is treading in political waters
where he doesn’t belong.Yes, it’s okay
for clergy to oppose a woman’s reproductive rights or a gay couple’s making the
ultimate commitment of marriage, but not for a pope to take the side of science
when it comes to climate change.It’s
also okay, even desired, that clergy bless this or that public event, but not
for the spiritual leader of Catholics worldwide to challenge the kind of capitalism
that is leaving most of its inhabitants behind.

It must
be awkward for the Rick Santorum’s of this world — devout Catholics — who claim
“not to be scientists” and dismiss the impact of human actions on the
atmosphere as unproven theory much as many of them have rejected Darwin and
evolution.What to do for those who are
so fast to do so, and with such unquestioning conviction, with a spiritual
leader who said early on, “Who am I to judge”?This is not to suggest that Pope Francis is a doctrinal liberal — he has
yet to make any substantive changes on matters like celibacy, women priests or
family planning. He is unlikely to do so.He proclaimed with compassionate reasoning a year’s grace when priests
could absolve a woman’s sin of abortion.Yet he hasn’t changed his church’s views on that or on birth
control.At the same time, he clearly
doesn’t want his church to be disconnected from the world, from either its many
problems or from human progress, including scientific exploration and
findings.That along with his apparent
mistrust of judgments made for purely self-serving economic reasons, puts him
on the side of the poor and against those who deny either climate change or our
role in bringing it about.He knows
those who deny our complicity are, either those whose enterprises are at play or
politicians financially dependent on the same vested interests.Mitch McConnell isn’t speaking for the people
who go down into dangerous and dirty mines but for the owners who finance
his campaigns.

Pope
Francis is an appealing and provocative man.
He has attracted admirers in and out of the Church. His message resonates for our time and it’s
interesting how well it plays into one of the themes of our current politics (certainly
for Democrats), income inequality. He is
particularly critical of capitalism gone wild, something that makes me think
about what’s happening in the Republican controlled Congress and across the
land where the GOP has taken old of governorships and legislatures. The consistent message of this group, one
that has been central to conservative thinking for a long time, is that
government is too big, that we should rely more on free enterprise and the
market place. We’ve heard that claim so
often that it has blinded us to a simple fact: it’s just the opposite. I
think the out-of-control pope sees that with clearer eyes than do we. It isn’t so much that
government has gotten too big, but more that business and the free enterprise
system has become dangerously bloated.
It’s business that is too big to fail and on some profound level too big
to employ fairly and serve. Yes, the
pope’s views on climate may make some on the right squirm in their seats, but
his view about inequality — and by extension out of control capitalism — is
what they find truly threatening. That
really makes him out of control.

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About Me

A branding consultant with decades of experience working with large global clients and brands, he now serves primarily young startup companies. Beginning his professional life as a rabbi of a large urban congregation, he has watched the numbers of the religiously unaffiliated grow in the years since leaving the pulpit. His book, Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars (available on Amazon) considers this phenomenon. Beyond his consulting practice Prinz spends much of his time writing, including this Blog. He posts to "Beyond All That" only when there is something to say that might add value to the conversation.